Customer Reviews

Introduction to Programming Using Java: An Object-Oriented Approach (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Much like the "introductory" computer science course I took in Spring 1999, the meaning of the word "introductory" seems to be unclear. We begin the book with a very comforting foray into object-oriented programming with the authors telling the students to keep up with the readings and examples in order to be well on their way to solid programmers. And, these words are kept in the initial chapters as real-life examples meet their computer program counterparts. The examples are worked nicely and are somewhat easy to follow.

Once we hit Chapter 3, though, there is a whiplash transition in terms of the material covered. Before the student knows it, he or she is coding their own Java class with instance variables, interfaces, subclasses, reference variables, boolean expressions, arrays, vectors, enumerations, iteration, lists, searching, sorting, stacks, queues, exceptions, overloading, overriding and not to mention recursion. And, this is all before the half-way mark.

If the authors wish to promote a solid introductory book to the Java language, the first thing is to eliminate recursion. This is not introductory material. Even though the authors try to simplify the topic by constantly comparing example code to a dishwashing chore after a meal, recursion is as difficult as it sounds. Also, searching, sorting, stacks, and queues best fit a book on data structures. Overall, though, I must commend the authors on the use of English when writing this book. I have read too many books where the psuedo-code makes less sense than the actual code itself. Thankfully, this is not one of them. But, if the book were trimmed down to just the basics, then it would truly fit its title and serve as an excellent welcoming to the expansive library of the Java programming language.

Rating: B-

I bought this book as a required text for my csc class last semester. As a begginer in programming , Java is the first language I've learned. And to be honest, I don't think this is a very good text for new programmers who don't any prior background in programming. Most of the time I used other books to learn Java myself.

If you're a beginning programer looking for good Java books, I recommand Bruce Eckel's "Thicking in Java" and Deitel & Deitel's "Java: How to program".

I think this book is not good. This is true for the majority ofcomputer textbooks, which is really annoying given that they are somuch more expensive than the norm. I am coming to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way most of these books are written. I think that as far as computer related books go Amazon should change their policy. Instead of using stars to rate books why not use tears or fists of hair. This is definitely a 4.5 tear book. I had to ring friends in search of comfort and encouragement through a number of chapters of this book. Try Real-Time-Systems by Krishna and Shin to get the full '5-tear' experience.)

The standard of english in this book is very poor. I find their sentences are loaded with ambiguity and that quite a few of the definitions and explainations are self-referencing, obscure or dubious. Chapter 4 uses sample code that has "ho", "hee" "haha" and "yuk". I found this very, very offputting given that I was struggling with the book anyway. Many of the examples are contrived and this makes them difficult to understand. In general I find that there is nothing substantial here - the material too piecemeal and that is also true of the exercises.

Someone told me that if you want to get a good book get a short one. I think that this rule/axiom holds up well.

I still have a sense of humour though, although I don't find a program that goes.....

yuk, harr, hee hee

the remotest bit funny.

BTW to help me get through this I am also using: Java How to Program, Deitel and Deitel Java in a Nutshell Java 1.1 Interactive Course, Beer

JNut is good

We used this book as our textbook in my CS1301 class in college. Although the book had its good points, halfway through the semester, my professor stopped using it because it was difficult for the beginning programmers in this class to follow it. It also still uses some parts of the Java language that have been changed and are now obsolete. Unless you already understand Java, I do not recommend using this book.

I was told to use this book for the introductory Java class I teach at a community college. I liked the idea of teaching objects. The book had a pretty cover, and the graphics are excellent. I read through the introductory matter and was less than pleased. By the time I got to Chapter 2, I knew there was a problem.

I have been coding in Java since it was Oak. "Cascading" and "Composition" introduced in Chapter 2?

The book using AWT instead of Swing/JFC, there were no usable student questions or exercises, and 70% of the appendix on Java Environments was devoted to the Macintosh!!

The text introduces the Vector class as a object oriented programming structure, and then basically tells the reader that arrays are better and negates all the benefits of introducing Java's collection classes.

The format forces me to rate 1 star; the star belongs solely to the graphics designers.

First off I cannot understand how anyone gave this book a good review. This is the text book for a course that I am taking and I have not heard any of the other people in the class say one good thing about it. The authors are unable to explain anything in plain english, it was as if there was a poor translation from some other language. The examples that they use make things even more confusing. If you want a good book get Ivor Horton's Java book. Ivor makes things seem so simple, almost too simple. Maybe that is one of the reasons that I dislike this book so much is that I had the opportunity to read a book that was well written. Another thing that I disliked about this book is that it seemed to jump right in to writing applets before the reader has had a good introduction to the language. Anway I could go on all night, but I won't (I only have a 1000 words!) Anyway if you are looking to buy a book get Ivor Hortons it will save you unnecessary pain.

I bought this book for a training program I was taking and I gotta say that this book is not for beginners. The examples are not explain in details and some basic concepts of programming are not shown.

This is more a java programming book rather than an introductory programming book using java. For beginners i recommend looking somewhere else.

Although the aesthetics of the book are pleasing, and the GUI sections are very good, I found too many errors in the code examples, which became apparent only after hours of beating my head against the wall. I would not recommend this book to beginners. The book could do a better job of introducing new concepts with short, simple examples (as done in Core Java 1.2 -- Volume 1). Some explanantions are not as clear as they could be.

The book is very good at defining different aspects of Java, but it is seriously lacking in examples of how the explanations work in Java code. It is frustrating for a first year student when you are introduced to concepts without examples of how they are used.

I have reviewed dozens of books on Java programming. This is one of the very few which teaches (OO) programming as the art it should be. It helps very much in understanding what all the tiny details are which you need to know to become a good programmer.

I also like very much the chapters about details of good programming, like those about loops. Such details are very important, but too often neglected in other books.

The reason I did not rate it as a five star book is that it concentrates in the beginning too much on string objects. This is excellent for understanding the basics, but I would have liked the book even better if it had explained more about other, more 'realistic' types of objects and if it did so sooner.